of reason any one can too easily find a reason for doing what he likes
(Wallace). He is suspicious of a distinction which is often made between a
person's character and his conduct. His spirit is the opposite of that of
Jesuitism or casuistry (Wallace). He affords an example of a remark which
has been often made, that in order to know the world it is not necessary to
have had a great experience of it.

2. Hegel, if not the greatest philosopher, is certainly the greatest
critic of philosophy who ever lived. No one else has equally mastered the
opinions of his predecessors or traced the connexion of them in the same
manner. No one has equally raised the human mind above the trivialities of
the common logic and the unmeaningness of 'mere' abstractions, and above
imaginary possibilities, which, as he truly says, have no place in
philosophy. No one has won so much for the kingdom of ideas. Whatever may
be thought of his own system it will hardly be denied that he has
overthrown Locke, Kant, Hume, and the so-called philosophy of common sense.
He shows us that only by the study of metaphysics can we get rid of
metaphysics, and that those who are in theory most opposed to them are in
fact most entirely and hopelessly enslaved by them: 'Die reinen Physiker
sind nur die Thiere.' The disciple of Hegel will hardly become the slave
of any other system-maker. What Bacon seems to promise him he will find
realized in the great German thinker, an emancipation nearly complete from
the influences of the scholastic logic.

3. Many of those who are least disposed to become the votaries of
Hegelianism nevertheless recognize in his system a new logic supplying a
variety of instruments and methods hitherto unemployed. We may not be able
to agree with him in assimilating the natural order of human thought with
the history of philosophy, and still less in identifying both with the
divine idea or nature. But we may acknowledge that the great thinker has